Live the Dream

On August 5, to mark the 67th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there will be a protest at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab. Scott Yundt, staff attorney for Tri-Valley CAREs, discusses the upcoming protest and US nuclear policy. The nuclear weapons budget that President Obama sent to Congress earlier this year requested more than $7.5 Billion for nuclear weapons R&D, an increase of $363 Million over last year. Obama’s nuclear weapons budget, adjusted for inflation, is the largest in US history. The Livermore nuclear weapons lab is one of the world’s primary nuclear weapons lab.

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On the 61st anniversary of the first atomic bombing, Terra Verde interviews Keiji Tsuchiya, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor, who served as a rescue worker in the week immediately following the bombing. Now at age 78 he is Vice President of Okayama A-bomb Sufferers Association. We will also be joined by Tara Dorabji of Tri-Valley CAREs who will talk about nuclear development in the Bay area and the role of companies like Bechtel, which has built more than half of the nuclear facilities in the United States.

Bechtel is partnered with the University of California to manage the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico. The company is also now poised to announce its intent to bid for the management contract of the Livermore nuclear weapons lab. The contract for the Livermore Lab is up for competitive bid for the first time in its 53-year history.

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On Hiroshima’s 60th anniversary, Abid Aslam interviews Tara Dorabji and others on the Renewed Call for Nuclear Disarmament, published in One World on August 7, 2005.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 6 (OneWorld) – The threat of nuclear destruction–from existing stockpiles, a new arms race, or at the hands of terrorists or rogue states–looms large 60 years after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, peace activists have warned.

The United States bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. More than 200,000 people died in the two Japanese cities. Survivors continue to contend with serious illnesses doctors blame on exposure to high levels of radiation.

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In Nuclear Protest Blooms Again at Lab, Diana Walsh interviews Tara Dorabji for the San Francisco Chronicle on August 11, 2003.

It’s been two decades since the largest anti-nuclear protests took place outside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

On Sunday, protesters returned, and returned strong. Revitalized by anti- war demonstrations this spring, an estimated 1,000 people joined hands to protest the lab’s role in producing new-generation nuclear warheads.

“Nuclear weapons didn’t go away, they just went off the public radar,” said Tara Dorabji, who helped organize the protest with a local organization that calls itself Tri-Valley CAREs.